Generic shindiggery about life as a geophysicist.

Rewriting the Textbooks

So Castellano and Chilean Spanish do vary, just in case it was too easy for me. While talking and listening, I’ve noticed a few differences between the two, and, although I’m aware of them, old habits die hard, and so I can only assume that I have a very obvious Spanish accent (or, more accurately, an accent of an Englishman speaking Spanish from Spain).

So, la lista:

1. People here speak very quickly (I’ve been told this by my Chilean colleagues).

2. The lisp that you have when saying stuff like “verdad”, “usted”, or “doce” doesn’t exist. So you get “verdaD”, “usteD”, or (ok I’m not sure how to write this, but for “doce” it’s “do-say”, not “do-thay” – with a short “o” like in “hot”).

3. Plurals don’t seem to exist. Ok, that’s clearly a lie, but what I mean is that the “s” at the end often appears to be silent (so in fact it doesn’t actually appear at all)! For example, if I were to say something like “gracias”, it is actually pronounced as “gracia”. “Dos horas” instead is “do hora”.

I admit that all this could be total rubbish, but it’s what I’ve noticed to be the case thus far!

I’ve also been taught some Chilean Spanish words by various people, including “fome”, which means “boring”, and “bacán”, which means “great”.